1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a laser treatment apparatus for treating a patient by irradiating a laser beam to a portion of body to be treated (diseased portion).
2. Description of Related Art
Laser treatment apparatus have been used for the treatment of various diseases based on the selection of the wavelength of treating laser. In the recent neoplasty for removing wrinkles, ephelides, birthmarks, stains, etc. of patients, attention is paid to laser treatment apparatus that use the CO2 laser (carbon dioxide gas laser) having infrared wavelengths. In the neoplasty using these laser treatment apparatus, a hand-piece is used to apply a laser beam emitted from a laser source of the apparatus to a diseased portion. The hand-piece is provided, at its bottom, with one projecting member extending downward and is supported in contact with a patient's body (skin) to surely set a laser irradiation position onto the diseased portion during operation. The laser irradiation onto a remarkably wide area is made with the hand-piece unit provided with a laser scanning device for making a treatment laser beam scan the diseased portion.
However, the hand-piece supported on a patient's body by the one projecting member is in an unstable state and therefore tends to incline. In addition, since the contact area of the projecting member to the patient's body (skin) is extremely small, even a little pressing force by an operator who holds the hand-piece will deform the patient's skin. This deformation of the skin may cause the change in an irradiation distance from a laser emission port to the diseased portion. In particular, in the laser treatment apparatus based on the scanning irradiation of a treatment laser beam, the change in an irradiation distance prevents the precise laser irradiation on the diseased part to be treated.
Furthermore, signals representative of the information relating to a scanning position of a laser beam are constantly transmitted between the hand-piece unit provided with the laser scanning device and a control system through a connector and the like. If this hand-piece unit adapted for a laser scan mode is replaced with a different one for a laser non-scan mode (a laser stationary mode), no signal is transmitted from the hand-piece unit to the control system. In this regard, there is a possibility that the control system detects in error that the laser scanning device of the hand-piece unit is out of order and controls wrong the entire apparatus so as not to operate when a scan made is selected.
On the other hand, the apparatus designed to be operable even when the connector for the hand piece-unit is disconnected may cause a possibility that a laser beam is continuously emitted without scanning to the diseased portion if a scan mode is selected in error.
In neoplasty using the above laser treatment apparatus, when the tissue of the diseased portion is burned by laser irradiation, smoke is generated from the burned diseased portion. The smoke tends to become stains such as soot which will stick to an optical system arranged in a laser emission port, resulting in a decreased power of the laser beam. In addition, the smoke makes it difficult for an operator to observe the diseased portion to be treated by laser irradiation. For a measure to solve the problems, there is known a method of jetting air from the vicinity of the laser emission port of the hand-piece to the diseased portion to eliminate the smoke generated from the diseased portion burned by the laser beam. In this case, an air pump, a gas supply device, arranged independently from the main body of the laser treatment apparatus, is used.
However, the independent air pump must be operated with an extra switch provided separately from a switch for the main body of the laser treatment apparatus, which is troublesome for an operator. In particular, if the operator has to move from his position where he operates the apparatus especially to turning on/off the air pump switch, it imposes a more troublesome work on the operator. Furthermore, the turning on/off of the air pump is left in the operator's hands. If the operator forgets to turn on the switch to activate the air pump at the time of performing laser irradiation, accordingly, the stains resulted from the smoke will stick to the optical system arranged in the laser emission port of the hand-piece, preventing good observations of the diseased portion. The air pump disposed independently from the main body of the laser treatment apparatus requires a large installation space for the whole apparatus.